Monthly Archives: March 2022

Kahikatea News Week 9 Term 1

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Kia ora koutou!

What a wonderful nine weeks we have had in team Kahikatea! We have been so proud of the hard work from all of the tamariki in our hub. Thank you for continuing to support us at this time, especially by keeping up to date with information being shared via HERO and by keeping your children at home when they are unwell.


A Week in the Life of a Kahikatea Learner

Below is an example of a typical week in the life of a Kahikatea learner. You may wish to talk about this with your child/ren. Some questions to prompt discussion could include:
- What is your favourite time of the day at school?
- Who do you enjoy playing with during morning tea and lunchtime?
- Which time of the day do you feel you learn the best? Why do you think this is?
- What is your favourite learning area? Why?
- What have you learned so far about being sustainable?
- What have you been learning in Structured Literacy?
- What have you been learning about during Maths?



Learning At Home

Here is the Learning at Home link for those of you who may need to use it. We are adding and updating our content every so often. This includes activities for Learning Through Play, Maths, and Literacy. If you child completes learning when at home, they can share what they have done via Seesaw. We would love to see the wonderful work that they are doing at home! If completing activities isn't achievable for any reason, then that is absolutely fine too.


Kinetic Letters Handwriting Programme

We have loved getting our Kinetic Handwriting lessons up and running. Thank you for the care that tamariki have shown Bounce and Skip when they come to your place for a sleepover. The excitement of the children when they get to take the monkeys home is delightful.





Sustainability

It has been wonderful to address our concept-based curriculum theme of Sustainability in Kahikatea in the past week. By the end of this term, all children would have had a lesson about taking care of our outdoor equipment, indoor equipment, water conservation, and how to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Dolls

One of the most popular toys played with during Learning Through Play is our dolls. We are on the hunt for more dolls, furniture for the dolls house, etc. to build upon what we already have.


Reminders

Please name your child's lunchbox (including any small containers), drink bottle, sunhat, and school jersey. Please also remind your child/ren to please keep their shoes on at school. Children who do take their shoes off are encouraged to place them on one of the shoe racks in the hub and to put their socks inside their shoes.


Library

Amber and Krystals home groups go to the library on Tuesdays, and Katie and Emma's home groups go to the library on Thursdays. Please ensrue that you child has their library folder with them on their allocated day.








That's all for now! Thank you for your ongoing support. Please feel free to get in touch via your child's teacher via email anytime.

Team Kahikatea

amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz
katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz
emma.hayes-smith@beckenham.school.nz
krystal.hunt@beckenham.school.nz
lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz

Kauri Whānau Update: Term 1 Week 9

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In the post

  • If away
  • Kauri Learning
  • Supporting your child's maths learning
  • Basketball
  • Outdoor education
  • Technology photos

If away

Many thanks to those families who are letting the school know when you are isolating. We would also like to know if a child tests positive. Can you please keep us up to date with your situation by emailing or calling Jacky or Reihana in the office? 


Kauri Learning

Learning in the Kauri hub is ticking along nicely, despite substantial numbers of children being away. A reminder that if your child is at home unwell, or isolating then learning can be accessed via Google Classroom (literacy and Kauri classrooms), Maths-Whizz and activities outlined on our learning at home page. It has been great to see children and parents emailing home-group or maths teachers when they have questions. It is also good to see children using their at-home learning time as an opportunity to get some blogging done for their kete badges.


Supporting your child's maths learning

  • We operate a basic facts programme at school which sees the children learning about and practising sets of basic facts each week. This looks different for each child, based on where they are at. In the early stages are addition and subtraction facts, through to multiplication and division facts, and on to finding factors of a number, converting between fractions, decimals and percentages and many other facts in between. We teach understanding of these facts in class and make connections between the facts and key maths concepts. For example, knowing the lowest common multiple is needed to add fractions with different demoninators. 

    The children have a basic facts tracker that indicates what they have achieved and four areas that they are working on. In the next week we will photocopy each child's tracker and send this home, so that you can see what they are working on. Practising these facts at home each week will greatly help their progress with acquiring mastery of basic facts. Below is a video of a strategy that is a great quick daily practice for learning times tables. A few children are using this at home each day and they are making great progress. 

  • Children should also be spending 30 minutes at home working on Maths Whizz each week.


Basketball

In the anticipation of the basketball competition at Pioneer going ahead next term, we need to start putting teams together. If your child is interested in playing basketball, they need to fill in the form on Kauri Google Classroom.  The competition runs after school on a Monday or Friday afternoon with 30 min games falling between 3:30 and 6pm. 


Outdoor Education

With camp not happening this year, we are looking at having outdoor education opportunities each term. We are starting to look at options for a term 2 experience and will provide more details once we have something booked. 

Looking ahead to term 3, we have booked in our ski day at Mt Hutt on Thursday September 1st. Now we just need to keep fingers and toes crossed that the Covid situation settles down enough so that the trip can go ahead. Early next term we will put out a form asking for parent help with this trip.


Technology Photos















Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter, Rāmere (Friday) 25 March

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Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

It was lovely to get back to school on Wednesday out of my week in isolation as a household contact of someone with Covid! 

This week has seen a little more progress on the fencing project, with new posts going in around the netball court by the Kōmanawa building. we expect this next section of fencing to be completed by the end of next week.

Roadworks continue next week

We have spoken with the team who are working on the new water pipes on Birdwood Ave and Sandwich Road, and they expect Sandwich Road to continue to be a one-way street for all of next week. Thank you for adjusting your pick-up and drop-off plans to accommodate these roadworks, and keep our children safe.

COVID-19 update

Since we reported to you on Tuesday 22 March, we have had another 8 cases of Covid confirmed across the school. We continue to see people returning to school having completed their period of isolation, whilst others go into isolation, mostly as household contacts. We have had more staff needing to isolate as well, accounting for a number of relievers in the school.



Attendance across the school since our first Covid case 3 weeks ago has gone from around 88%, to 77% at the end of this week. In conversations with principals of other Christchurch schools, daily attendance is mostly varying between around 60-80% at the moment. Given we might be getting to the peak of COVID, we hope to see this attendance rate climb back up again by the end of this term and in Term 2. Saying that, we continue to appreciate you keeping sick children at home!

Ngā mihi nui
Sandy Hastings
Tumuaki - Principal

Important Dates

Upcoming Events

Wed 30th Mar - BOT Meeting 5.30pm - 7.30pm (Staff Room)
Thu 14th Apr - Last day of Term 1
Fri 15th Apr - Good Friday (School Closed)
Term 2
Note that Monday 2nd May is a Staff Only Day (School Closed)
Tue 3rd May - First day of Term 2 

Term Dates

Click here to view 2022 term dates.

Citizen of the Week

Madeleine Dougherty - Year 6

Madeleine, you are a great example of someone who demonstrates all our school values. You always take up the challenge to further your own learning, and your love of learning absolutely shines through. You contribute in many ways to our school community. Kai pai to mahi!

School Notices

No Coffee Cart next week - Nicola is not available

Paying your school Donation

Thank you to all of those people who have logged into their HERO via their browser or app, clicked on 'Finance' and have paid, or made contributions towards, their school donation for 2022.
 

Claiming back 33% of your School Donations and Contributions from the IRD

Just a reminder that if you make payments towards this year’s School donation before 31st March it will appear on your Donation receipt for the current financial year and you may be eligible to claim back 33.33 cents for every dollar you donate to the school. 


You are now able to produce your own Tax Donation Receipt from your Hero Login, from the tax year ending 31st March 2022. You will need to do this by signing in through your browser, not in the app.

Please follow this link for instructions. Your receipt will be downloaded to your device for you to print or attach to your online IRD donation claim.

For receipts for previous years, you will still need to contact Rachel Higginson by emailing accounts@beckenham.school.nz to request a tax receipt.

There is a limit of 4 tax years for claiming so this means you are currently able to claim for:

2018 tax year (ending 31 March 2019)
2019 tax year (ending 31 March 2020)
2020 tax year (ending 31 March 2021)
2021 tax year (ending 31 March 2022)

Scholastic Book Club

Thinking about our environment and the amount of paper waste that occurs we are no longer issuing Scholastic Book Club brochures to students. You can however view the Scholastic Book Club brochure online and place your order as usual. You can access the brochure via the link below:


If you would like a paper copy, please contact the Office and we can organise this for you.

Library Books Still Missing

Our library books are still missing and we would really love to get them back. Please can you check your home bookcase, in bags, under the bed - or any other place books tend to wander. Or, if we have lent you one of these wonderful books could you kindly return them back to our library or email the Office (office@beckenham.school.nz) saying you would like to keep them a little longer. Thank you!
Hey Warrior - Book Title

Hey Awesome - Book Title

What To Do When Your Temper Flares - Book Title

BOT Update

From time to time we will ask you to review one of our policies that come up on our review cycle. The policy for parental review this term is the School Closure Policy. 
You will find it on School Docs site using this link.

You will need to log in using the Username: beckenham and the Password: pride

We have now found that the best way to give Feedback really simply is done by clicking the green speech bubble.
From here, you will be taken to this form (pictured below) where you can give feedback. This may include things you think need to be added, considered, or altered. We really appreciate you taking a few moments to give feedback on our School Policies.
Please note: it is vitally important that the school has all of your up to date information, if in the case of an emergency (or school closure) we have to contact you urgently. If you have had any changes within the last year, or since enrolment, PLEASE email us at office@beckenham.school.nz and update your address, living arrangements, email address, contact phone numbers - including place of work and work contact details. We may have the correct details already - but it pays to double-check this!

Congratulations to some past Beckenham students!

The cast for the 2022 Cashmere High school production, Jesus Christ Superstar, has been announced. It was fantastic to see so many of our past Beckenham students getting involved and being given both leading roles, and parts in the Ensemble. We counted 5/9 lead roles being past Beckenhan ākonga! Congratulations to these talented young people! Isaac Macdonald, Sadie McLoughlin, Ben Evans, Juliette Gray, Georgina Cockfield, Sophia Brown, Morvern McDaid, Nathan Salgado, Fynn Skelton and  Hannah Winchester

BOSCO NEWS

Bookings are now open for the School Holiday programme at BOSCO


For more information, call 0276456632, or email office@bosco.org.nz

Book now at bosco.aimyplus.com

Community Notices

(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)


Be sure to click on the event details below so you can stay notified about these upcoming events. 

April 2nd: Fossil Fools Day - https://fb.me/e/1vv02W0H6

April 9th: All About BUGS - https://fb.me/e/6m4VbVHXW

April 16th: Easter Upcycle Workshop - https://fb.me/e/2hZ32Fdg7

April 23rd: Upcycle Fabric Workshop - https://fb.me/e/3cU6Dp0No

April 30th: "2040" Movie Screenings - https://fb.me/e/1FC9TKe1x

Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter, Rāmere (Friday) 18 March

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Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

Thank you all for continuing to support our efforts to keep all of our community healthy by keeping sick children at home. Thank you also for keeping us informed about children who are staying home due to being household contacts of confirmed cases. I write this to you today from my home - being myself a household contact of a confirmed COVID case! I expect to be back at school again by Wednesday of next week. 

Please remember to advise us if your child contracts COVID. We are required to give daily numbers (no names) to the Ministry of Education.

We are seeing attendance across the school has been slowly dropping through the term and for the last two weeks, we have had less than 400 out of 473 children at school each day. At one level, this has been expected as we have had COVID cases confirmed and people are having to go into isolation.

However, we do not believe that COVID is being transmitted at school!

We do have a number of students who are staying away from school due to 'being cautious'. While we also understand this, we have seen very little, if ANY, evidence of anyone catching COVID at school. In almost every case reported below, both for staff and students, the transmission has happened at home or in a social setting (which is to be expected as these settings are usually without masks and distancing). For that reason, we would encourage those families who are keeping children home out of caution, to send them to school so that their learning can continue uninterrupted. The measures that we are taking at school certainly seem to be making an important difference, and are making school a safe place for your child.


We are not seeing a huge rise in cases, and this week, we have had two days with no new cases reported. Our total number of cases at school since the first case on 3rd March is 23. This is an average of only 1.4 cases per day over the last 16 days.

Covid Cases per day - average 1.4 cases per day

Let's keep learning and staying safe together!

Ngā mihi mahana
Sandy Hastings
Tumuaki - Principal

Important Dates

Upcoming Events

Wed 23rd Mar - PTA Meeting 7.30pm - 9.30pm (Green Room)
Wed 30th Mar - BOT Meeting 5.30pm - 7.30pm (Staff Room)
Thu 14th Apr - Last day of Term 1
Fri 15th Apr - Good Friday (School Closed)
Term 2
Note that Monday 2nd May is a  Staff Only Day (School Closed)
Tue 3rd May - First day of Term 2 

Term Dates

Click here to view 2022 term dates.

Citizen of the Week

Maisie Lovelock - Year 8

Maisie, you are a shining star in our Kauri whānau. Your positive, kind and inclusive nature makes you a joy to be around. A proactive attitude and love of learning are key to your success. Thank you for the wonderful ways that you contribute and participate within our kura. 

School Notices

Updates to road closures/route changes

Thank you all for the way that you have supported our students to be safe this week with adjusting your travel around the school for the road works. 

Next week, Sandwich Road will be ONE WAY only, with entry from Norwood St and Exit via Eastern Tce.

Next week Sandwich Road past the school will be ONE WAY ONLY

We would encourage you to continue to walk and wheel as much as possible, and to park on Eastern Tce or Norwood St for pick-ups. There will be no entry into Sandwich Road from Eastern Terrace next week except for residents, staff and accessibility vehicles.

Walk & Wheel Prize Draw

Walk and wheel prizes have been drawn! Thank you to all of our tamariki who entered their names into the draw. It was so amazing to see how many tamariki were eligible to put their name in the draw. To be eligible you needed to have "walked or wheeled" to school at least 3 times over the past two weeks.



Prizes have been drawn and will be delivered to hubs next week.

Lost Property

We have a lost property rack out on the Library deck each day. Please have your children check here during morning tea and lunch. A reminder that it helps to have things named as we can get items back to your childs teacher much easier!

As well as this, we have quite the collection of other items held in the office. If your child is missing a watch, pounamu, or even glasses please come into the office and describe your item. We may have it! (Note some have been lost this year and some are from last year).

Scooter Mix Up today

We have had a look-alike scooter mix-up today after school. Please see the below pictures to see if you recognise this scooter as it may be yours!


The scooter that is missing (likely taken home by mistake) is very similar to this with key differences being it has a mountain-style sticker instead of a cross sticker, and the handle grips are not broken. If your child has picked up the wrong scooter accidentally, please can you return it to the office on Monday, where you will likely find yours waiting for you!

Policy Review

From time to time we will ask you to review one of our policies that come up on our review cycle. The policy for parental review this term is the Visitors Policy. 
You will find it on School Docs site using this link.  
You may need to log in using the Username: beckenham and the Password: pride

Click on "Current Review"




Scroll down to find the policy called "Visitors"

Once you have read the policy, click on the red icon in the top right hand corner, to leave your review!



Contact Details

Parents are responsible for letting the school know about any changes to their contact details, including details of parents who don't live with the child but who wish to receive school information and notices. If you have any changes, or want to check your details, please do this by coming into the Office, or emailing office@beckenham.school.nz. We appreciate you keeping us in the loop!

Staff Only Days for 2022 confirmed

Due to COVID, we have shifted the Staff Only Day that was proposed for Term 1 to Term 3.
We have confirmed the following dates as Staff Only Days for 2022:
  • Monday 2 May (Term 2 will now start on Tuesday 3 May)
  • Friday 12 August
  • Monday 19 September  

Absences

Please remember to contact the school office if your child will be absent from school. This includes if they are learning from home, unless you have already provided us with a timeline for their absence. 

When contacting us please remember to include; your name, your child’s name, the reason for their absence and how long you expect your child will be away from school.

If you do not provide a reason for your child’s absence, we are required to mark this as an unjustified absence on their attendance report.

Phone: (03) 337-1404 (Press 1 to leave an absence message)
or Text Message: 021 027 94107
or Email: office@beckenham.school.nz

Scholastic Book Club

Thinking about our environment and the amount of paper waste that occurs we are no longer issuing Scholastic Book Club brochures to students. You can however view the Scholastic Book Club brochure online and place your order as usual. You can access the brochure via the link below.

Lost Library Books

Dear parents and caregivers, if we have lent you one of these wonderful books could you kindly return them back to our library or email the Office (office@beckenham.school.nz) saying you would like to keep them a little longer. Thank you!

Hey Warrior
Hey Awesome

What to do when your temper flares

PTA News

Keep in touch with the PTA

To stay up to date with the PTA, please check out our Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto PTA Facebook page, linked here. Or come along to one of our meetings - all welcome.
 
Meeting dates can be found in the weekly school newsletter, or on the school calendar - linked here.
These meetings are usually held on a Wednesday night 7.30-9.30pm.

You can email the PTA at pta@beckenham.school.nz



Koru Week 7, with a focus on Structured Literacy

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Kia ora e te whanau,

We hope everything's going well for you all on the home front. We have reached the end of Week 7, and it has been a fun-filled and epic fortnight here in the Koru hub.

Here is the Learning At Home page link for those of you who might be needing it. We are adding and updating our content every so often, however you will see that there are enormous possibilities here on our Koru page. If your child completes some Learning Through Play, some Literacy activities and some Maths activities each day, then that is terrific. If, on some days, this isn't achievable for any reason, then that is absolutely fine too. You will see that in class, we start each day with our karakia, followed by the National Anthem, and this might be a good thing to do at home as well.

Today you will see that the children have brought home, in their bags, their unique Home Learning codes which will give you access to Seesaw. We will be using Seesaw for those of you who are engaging in Learning From Home.

Structured Literacy: Across the school and within our Koru hub, we use the Structured Literacy approach to teaching reading. This approach focuses on speech sounds first, then leads on to the writing and reading of these sounds in words. As our tamariki learn different sounds, they then learn to blend and segment these sounds to read and write words. We also follow another specific approach for our handwriting which is called 'Kinetic Letters', and these handwriting skills are also practised during Literacy lessons.

Scope and Sequence: There are 7 different stages within the Structured Literacy approach. Each stage has new sounds for the children to learn and requires different skill sets. As children move through the stages, new skills are learnt and these build upon previous skills that the children have learnt.

We love practising our letter sounds at home with our families.

We can make words using our letter cards, to practise our segmenting and blending skills.
 
We can use our sounds and heart words to write a sentence.

Well done! Great work at writing a sentence independently.

Reading books: With Structured Literacy, there is a great series of books that goes along with this approach to support the children with their learning. In order to read the books, our tamariki must know most of the first 8 letter sounds. They will have been practising the skills of segmenting and blending sounds to encode and decode words, which then leads to the children being given a book.

Little Learners Love Literacy: This website, “Why LLLL (Little Learners Love Literacy)? has additional information as to why we use the Little Learners Love Literacy programme.


The above video explains how to clearly and correctly pronounce each of the letter sounds and will help you support your children as they practise these with you at home.


This little video clip focuses on phonological awareness. Watch how Linda Farrell gives Autumn explicit practice in blending, segmenting, and manipulating the sounds in words.

Caroline Moffatt's Structured Literacy Parent talk: Last year, Caroline Moffatt, our Resource Teacher of Literacy, led a workshop for parents, devoted to the Structured Literacy approach to teaching reading and writing. This contains valuable information related to the Science of Reading and our approach towards Literacy here at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto.


Here is a link to all our information regarding our Structured Literacy approach which you will find on our school website: https://www.beckenham.school.nz/index.php/learning/literacy-learning

We do hope you all have a restful and very happy weekend, everyone. We're looking forward to seeing those bright and happy wee faces next week!

Ngā mihi mahana koutou,
Elizabeth, Georgia and Stacey